Canopus Procoder Express - an equivalent?

[AlecWest]

I bought Canopus Procoder Express for doing effortless conversions and NTSC/PAL transcodes. And, it's still going strong and I've got nothing but good things to say about my user experiences.

But...

As I understand it, Procoder Express has been discontinued. And while some people are still selling it, I expect support for it will probably disappear soon, too. I'd like to install similar software on my notebook - and, later this year, on a new desktop I plan to buy.

Question (especially if you've been a Procoder Express user), is there an equivalent piece of software out there that will do multiple format conversions and NTSC/PAL transcodes but does NOT require:

1) Online activation.
2) The use of a "dongle."

???

Money (within reason ... I paid $59 for Procoder Express) is less the object than functionality and user friendliness. Suggestions please.

[guns1inger]

You can do it for free with a simple avisynth script, HCEnc and DGPulldown. I'm not a big fan of using an encoder to alter format, although ProCoder does have a good rep for this. Which is your other problem - no other encoder has a good reputation for format change. The DGPulldown method avoids the need to do this at the encoder level.

[AlecWest]

That would take care of the NTSC/PAL transcode issue. But Procoder Express does multiple format cross-conversions. It literally converts just about any format you can think of to any other format ... not always well, but it does have the ability.

I suspect, to get "all" the functionality I want, I'll just have to bite the bullet and buy 2 more copies of the software. It's still being sold by a number of vendors.

FWIW, I emailed Canopus to ask them about it. They said Procoder Express wasn't being "discontinued" per se, it was being "incorporated" into their Edius software (spendy). Procoder 2.0 is still being sold and is readily available ... soon to be replaced by Procoder 3.0 (again, spendy). I'd go that route except I've heard horror stories about how well the software works but how "delicate" the dongle is.

Sigh. They did say, however, that Canopus would continue to support activation of newly bought Procoder Express and software issues relative to it ... but that "re-activation" (required if your system changes substantially) support may be iffy.

So, unless someone else comes up with an alternative, I'll probably have to bite the bullet and buy the software twice more - while it's still being sold as new. And afterward, perhaps (ahem) someone will come up with an activation "patch" to minimize problems during a re-installation.